[J.R.R. Tolkien] New Tolken Book Found

[Bêthberry]

Amen, Mark12_30.

Why would Tolkien attempt to ratrapper la langue perdue, Bill Ferny? Because it was there to be done, an intellectual curiosity of the mind. Unlike you, I do not think that the stress patterns and alliterative forms of Old English cannot be found in our current language.

For those of you who might not know Old English prosody (the structure of stress, rhythm, verse forms), allow me to explain briefly here.

Old English poetry was not based on a regular system of fixed or defined stressed and unstressed syllables, nor on rhyming ends of lines.

A line in OE poetry consisted of two half-lines, with a strong break or pause (caesura) in the middle of the line.

The total number of syllables in each half-line was not fixed.

The important point was to have two stressed syllables in each half-line (thus, four stresses in each line). The stressed terms had to alliterate (begin with the same sound).

One other feature was the use of compounded words (called kennings), such as 'wordhoard' to refer to what we would now call 'library' or 'book collection.'

Tolkien is not alone in his interest in Old English prosody. The Victorian poet Gerard Manley Hopkins also used OE stress patterns, alliteration, and kennings to create his "sprung rhythm." Admittedly, Hopkins is a bit of an acquired taste--no other Romantic or Victorian poet sounds like him--with his deliberate desire to alienate his poetry from the contemporary tongue. This defamiliarizing tendency is inherent in all poetry, although acquired in different ways. (See one of Rimbaud's former sigs, for Shelley on this quality.)

It is perhaps valuable at this point to provide one of Hopkins' poems for consideration, in consideration of Lothlorien and death.

Spring and Fall

to a young child

1Margaret, are you grieving
2Over Goldengrove unleaving?
3Leaves, like the things of man, you
4With your fresh thoughts care for, can you?
5Ah! as the heart grows older
6It will come to such sights colder
7By & by, nor spare a sigh
8Though worlds of wanwood leafmeal lie;
9And yet you wíll weep & know why.
10Now no matter, child, the name:
11Sorrow's springs are the same.
12Nor mouth had, no nor mind, expressed
13What héart héard of, ghóst guéssed:
14It is the blight man was born for,
15It is Margaret you mourn for.

An explication of this poem by Professor Ian Lancashire can be found here.

Bethberry